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tv   All In With Chris Hayes  MSNBC  December 17, 2013 5:00pm-6:01pm PST

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that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us, all in with chris hayes started right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. over the past several months we have watched the right wing cycle through a series of increasingly desperate obama care scare -- go after obama care the way they went after a.c.o.r.n. >> the embedded men and women in the white house to help you enroll in the obama care -- >> navigators, they have people trying to help other people get health insurance. no, really, that's it. navigator is the name given to people paid by the federal government to work with
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community groups and government agencies to help uninsured americans get insurance, nothing more, nothing les. but the right wing has decided that these people are the vanguard of obamaunism. >> this is basically just another form of communitying organizing paid for with your tax dollars that acorn revisited if you will. >> we are talking about trained counselors who are helping uninsured people get insurance. enter james okie. he's the right wing activist who staged the infamous a.c.o.r.n. sting, and pled guilty to entering a federal building where louisiana senator mary landrieu's office was located under false pretenses, bottom line, nothing he does is credible, ever. but that hasn't stopped darrell
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issa from bringing it along on his anti-obama care road show. over the past several weeks, issa has traveled from gastonia, north carolina. out west to apache junction, arizona. and last night he ended up in richardson, texas holding official congressional hearings about obama care. >> as we all know an online exam also can be taken by somebody else pretending to be the navigator. >> last night's hearing, obama care implementation. who are the navigators? >> we cannot have a repeat of the a.c.o.r.n. like activities that led to too many people believing that there was something for nothing. >> the american people are losing confidence in their government. maybe we can look to fast and furious, we can look to benghazi, we can look to the irs scandal, we can look to the broken promises of if you like
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your health insurance, you can keep it, period. >> i would have you look at the screen. >> enter the conservative project veritaz group. >> that was a clip of bill o'reilly being screened at an official congressional hearing. but wait, it gets better. >> the project veritas under cover talked to a few of these people in training. >> the good news is the attacks on obama care are increasingly resembling the right wing e-mail forwards from which they have sprung. the bad news is no matter how misleading the right -- >> last night the democratic controlled senate voted 83-7 to deny a.c.o.r.n. access to millions of dollars in federal housing funds. >> but for darrell issa, the only reality that does exist is the one reflected on fox.
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he basically said so last night when he told a local health official, you need to watch for fox, i'm afraid. but i have a different idea for a hearing issa could be holding in texas, a state with over -- hoz whose governor refused to expand medicaid, instead of telling officials to watch more fox, how about doing what the navigators are doing and try to get the people of texas insured. >> joining me now a multimedia reporter who's covering this story. you were at the hearings last night and man, does it sound like a strange, strange scene. paint the picture for us. >> well, it lasted about 2 1/2 hours and it was on the stage there at the performance hall in richardson, in the dallas area, you had the fife republican lawmakers, one democrat from the texas delegation and it was mainly focused on the navigators, but there was an opportunity in the opening remarks from each of the congressmen on both sides of the
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aisle to posture a little bit as far as the republicans outlining other aspects of the law that they don't like, and the sole democrat taking the opportunity to call out governor perry if you will and say if we need to be talking about a more pressing problem and that is expanding medicare and medicaid, rather, as you just alluded to. >> who's going to a field congressional hearing on the evil obama care navigator? it seems like a slightly strange thing for a citizen to do on a monday night, who was in the crowd? >> it was in the afternoon, and you would think it was an even sparser crowd because people are working. but it was people of an older age, but you did have the texas organizizing project, the grass roots organization that helps low income texans protesting orallying outside of the hearing before it got started calling it a dog and pony show. but it was pretty sparsely populated there in the audience, but a very engaged audience.
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applause on both sides of the aisle when you heard the different remarks from the different lawmakers. >> concerning the -- texas has more if i'm not mistaken, more uninsured people than any state in the union, it certainly has the highest percentage, and a huge amount of people are now looking at no relief from this law that's been so demonized by republicans there. is that a live political issue in the state or is it being a applauded by the republicans who run state government. >> i have heard it more on the ground as far as i went down to the valley, the rio grande valley recently and met with some of the people signing up at the community health centers there and a lot of them say that people will come in who don't fall within that ideal window as far as where the subsidies kick in or that it's affordable for the working class texan to get health care and they're priced out of the market, run side or the other. it's a frustrating thing for the
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community health counselors and the navigators on the ground dealing with these people. so it's an ever present issue. >> as a reporter, have you seen the nefarious navigators wielding their nefarious ways as they nef fairously try to get people health insurance? >> i haven't recently. i thought it was going to meet with navigatored and actually at these community health centers, the people who sign them up are advocation health sen chers, they make appointments through the patients they serve at these clinics. >> the texas congressional delegation is a rare bunch, i would say, it's a state that has produced a particularly, let's say i'd logically extreme group of republican members of congress, particularly in the house. is this essentially them playing to their base? i mean this is kind of a lay-up for them, to have this kind of dog and pony show? >> they mostly did stick to the
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navigator issue, but for instance, michael burgess took the opportunity to tell a story of how he's tried to sign up on healthcare.gov a and has not been a able to complete the process and submit a payment and just kind of highlighting that aspect that had nothing to do with the focus of the hearing. but they all stuck to the guns pretty much. >> i think joining me now is es, jarrett and the obama administration now a fellow at the brookings institution. you have done training of these terrifying community organizing vanguard of obamaunism, what is the secret to their takeover of the american state? >> it's a really well kept secret, chris, they're really just trying to sign people up for health care. it's been really interesting to talk on the ground, i'm from
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texas, full disclosure, born and raised there and talking to actual navigators a and people who are actually doing the work that we have all been talking about, which didn't really come out in the hearing to be honest, they went through the requisite -- not even just the 20 hours of training, the navigators i have talked to are people who know the health care system, are from nonprofits in the communities, community health centers and they actually have gone through, you know, a longer period of health care training that will help to get people signed up. but they have been telling me that a lot of what they're trying to do is just meet the demands, there's so many people asking questions that if anything, they've just been overwhelmed with work. >> one of the interesting challenges in implementing the law right now is the fact that unlike, say, trying to find voters where there is a voter file, there is no unified file that says these are the people that don't have health insurance, you can go find them.
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so there's a key role to be played here by someone to kind of bridge the gap between people that need the insurance and the insurance product itself, right? >> the republican approach to a lot of this has been essentially that you should have basically no regulation of insurance companies. but you should regulate anybody who is helping anybody get insurance almost out of existence. the navigators, i wouldn't phrase them as being such a critical part of finding the uninsured. that's been a part of modeling and heat mapping and calling and probing the navigator groups. somebody who's young and healthy, if they're going to sign up for health care, they don't need a ton of help to do it. but folks who are really sick, who aren't that experienced with computers, who aren't that wealthy, who don't know how to use e commerce websites, they actually need a lot of help and
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they're the people who both need the insurance the most and need these navigators the most. so if you knock more and more navigators out of the game, these are the people who get hurt the most. >> there is an a.c.o.r.n. parallel here, a.c.o.r.n. was a -- but at the end of the day, a lot of what they were doing was just helping poor people get services, helping them to register to vote, helping them to get government benefits to which they were entitled and when they were taken out of the picture, it just hurt a whole bunch of poor people who absolutely were entitled to government services who then weren't getting them. >> in addition to the a.c.o.r.n. parallel, just to piggy back on to it, it's also hurting people, remember, non-english speaking populations are probably going to be hurt the most and in states like texas, we saw this with a.c.o.r.n., it was
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disenfranchised populations, populations where english wasn't their primary language, and i think it's ironic at a time when health care access is one of the greatest civil rights triumphs of at least my time and generation, that we're actually going to make some of these disparities worth for some of these ethnic minorities. >> i always wonder, when you're sitting in the white house, you're crafting this very big complicated piece of legislation, they're like i bet they're going to go nuts over the navigators, or is it like a surprising flower that pops up every stay, what conspiracy here theory or attack. >> nothing surprises me anymore. but in going through the large team, remember, this was such a monumental lift from so many people, everybody knew there would be problems with signing
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una up and transitions and north not knowing the constitutionality of the whole thing, but the patient navy goit for piece, it was a lot more of a oh, yeah that's a good idea, because it takes sense, who would think explaining how to sign up or as esra put it setting to the sickest people was a bad idea. it is a little surprising. >> you had a post up that was basically saying all these doomsday scenarios about a death spiral for obama care, that is not going to happen. where do you see the state of the law right now? >> i should say that was a great sarah cliff post. but the state law is that you've having a very rapid improvement in health care.gov. you're also seeing it in insurers that are beginning to unleash at least $5 billion of advertising over the next year. they thought they shouldn't drive people to an exchange.
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so you are beginning to have the machinery and the institutional support around the law begin to activate because all of a sudden getting somebody to the point where they might sign up is a good thing as opposed to a bad thing. we're in a place where the law is running far behind enrollment expectations, nobody know what is the risk pool is going to look like, and in truth nobody will really know until march. because all experiences we have had is that people won't sign up for the most part until they have a penalty looming over them and that's really at the end of march. so it will be hard to give a good progress report until we know what happens in that sort of final sprint of sign up. coming up, senator elizabeth warren has just introduced a bill that would prohibit employers from requiring prospective employees to tell their credit history when applying for a job. >> today highly qualified applicants with bad credit can
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be shut out of the job market. this is wrong. >> she'll be my guest, ahead. [ coughs, sneezes ] i have a big meeting when we land, but i am so stuffed up, i can't rest. [ male announcer ] nyquil cold and flu liquid gels don't unstuff your nose. they don't? alka seltzer plus night fights your worst cold symptoms, plus has a decongestant. [ inhales deeply ] oh. what a relief it is. -wow! -that feels wow! [ male announcer ] oral-b deep sweep, featuring three cleaning zones that remove up to 100% more plaque than a regular manual brush.
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congestion, for the smog. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air.
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so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment. did chris christie or his political appointee cronies shut down part of the world's busiest bridge in order to punish a political opponent? a month ago that question was only being asked in local new jersey media.
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then the national media and now on capitol hill hill. this is the traffic-gate scandal. at issue is an allegation from the democratic mayor of the new jersey town of ft. lee that sit at the entrance of the george washington bridge. that christie's appointees made a punitive decision to close two of the three access lanes on the bridge leading into his town. causing a traffic nightmare for ft. lee residents. half hour commutes taking four hours and kids showing up late to their first day of school. christie's appointees claimed they closed the lanes in order to do a traffic study. but the head of the agency that oversees the bridge said he has heard nothing about a terrific study. christie's allies closed the access lane to get back at the f lee may your because the mayor had conspicuously refused to
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support the mayor for reelection. christy has denied that allegation, even tried to turn them into a joke. >> i worked the kroens, i was actually the guy out there, i was in overhalls and a hat, but i actually was the guy working the cones out there. you really are not serious with that question. >> funny. but the scandal isn't going away. democrat j. rockefeller of west virginia the chairman of the senate commerce committee sent a letter to the department of transportation seeking a federal probe of the matter citing his concern about what appears to be political apintees to hamper their power. if the transportatidepartment o transportation gets involved, it will be the third body to study the scandal. the reason this scandal is exploding is simple. no one can explain why christy's allies ordered the lanes closed
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if it wasn't for petty political pay back. joining me now andrea bernstein. how big a deal would it be if this gets to the capitol hill. >> it's a big deal at any point when the story doesn't die. and i think that is what is the huge surprise for new jersey and these officials who seem to believe that they could do this and no one would notice, that they instructed officials within the port authority not to tell the director, not to tell the mayor of ft. lee. but there seemed to be a belief that they could contain this a and it came as a big surprise when "the wall street journal" and a number of other outlets began to pay attention because it's a really bad idea to mess with people's traffic. >> it's a really bad idea to mess with people to get back at their mayor to begin with. >> we don't know that that was
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the motivation, but what is clear from my reporting and from others reporting is that the official who directly ordered this, david wildstein who goes back with chris christie to high school was somebody who was very much feared in the agency and the feeling inside the port authority was that he was representing the governor, he was just a leap frog away, he was the number one official. and when he said it, whether christie ordered it or not -- >> it was interpreted as this was coming from the governor. when people say to him, thls a terrible idea, this is going to be massively disruptive. >> to say proposed was extended a fairly short process. what the head of bridges and tunnels testified is that they learned the friday before that this was going to happen, which they said was at variance from their normal procedures and that they shouldn't do anything to stop it. >> okay, i want to give some context here, because you think to yourself, you see this story
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at first, and you think to yourself, the charges being made is this is the pay back for a democratic mayor who wouldn't endorse chris christie, he's a democrat, chris christie is a republican. i think people need to understand how important democratic endorsements were in chris christie's releelection. there was a number of democrats across the state that supported chris christi. >> he had a name for them, chrissy cats, new jersey and presidential elections for more than a generation has always been blue. it's not a foregone conclusion that a republican governor could win. but he played it very, very well. he obviously got a big boost from sandy and no one would -- could give us particular evidence, but there was a lot of sort of sense among democrats and they kept saying we have a sense that there's a naughty and a nice list with christie and we have to play nice. >> i have heard new jersey politicos say there's a
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naughty-nice list, if you made nice with the governor, things were going to be all right. and that is the governor's reputation. we don't know what happened here, part of the reason this is becoming a story is that you've got two -- there is a perception among everybody who works in new jersey politics, that the christie administration will punish you if you are a wayward. >> that's the impression. and again, we have no evidence and what christie said at his rather lengthy one-hour plus press conference in which he was talking about the super bowl and baseball scores because he just wanted to outlast everybody. but he kept saying the politics is on the other side. this is national democrats trying to make an issue. he even said we're not in kansas anymore, dorothy. >> and that is the other side of this is that we're going to see this played to the hilt by democrats -- >> we are. >> because it is a perfect opportunity, there has been an
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attempt ever since chris christie burst on to the national scene part of an attack is that the guy's a bully. it started with the youtube clips of him yelling at teachers. and that was part of the kind of personality attack they used on chris christie, this guy's a bully and this fits in with that and we're going to see a lot more of that from democrats. >> the people felt and voters felt reflected in the polls that he was a bully, but he was there bully. >> yes, exactly. the problem is that this is now creating traffic, it's preventing people from getting to work, it's creating a potentially dangerous situation where the director said thankfully no one died. >> first responders couldn't get from point a to point b in the town of ft. lee. >> that's a different kind of bullying that people don't like. i think overwhelmingly that polls showed that many new jerseyans feel that christie is on their side.
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but this looks like he played favorites for his own political gain. >> it's just a simple whodunit. the first answer was a traffic study. no one can produce any evidence that such a thing existed. if it was a traffic study, you got to come up with an answer. but until they come up with with an answer, it's a story, it's a big story. >> and the democrats have now made clear that they don't intend to let that go. there are still seven subpoenas out in the new jersey assembly. there's senator jay rockefeller. to make most things happen, you do have to have congress get involved and a long time of covering the port authority, i used to joke i could never get anything out of them unless there was an act of congress. maybe we're now at that point. senator elizabeth warren is being hailed as the democratic party's economic populous wing. i will ask her if there is such
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what you pay for mortgages or arenrent. >> pulling a credit store is an easy way to find out more about an applicant's background. >> it's one of a -- sometimes very competitive positions. >> we are in the midst of a growing national debate about what the president has called
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the defining challenge of our time. growing inequality, it's causes and it's negative erkts. one of its most pernicious aspects is the way in which we set up traps to people people on the bottom on the bottom. cycles through millions of people releases them, lets them out into the world where they often find the first job application they encounter asking if they have a criminal record, which makes it hard to find and get a job, which makes it of course more likely they'll go back to prison. another obstacle to mobility, which employers are increasingly using as a way of weeding out job candidates, someone has a string of bad luck, has to pay for a loved one's catastrophe, goes through a bankruptcy and their credit score goes south and they can't get a job because the potential employer asks for that credit score, what do you think that's going to do with
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their credit score in the future, their future ability to contribute. one of washington's most eloquent voices senator elizabeth warren is introducing a bill to ban that practice. joining me now is senator warren. you've got a piece of legislation on precisely this issue, and i guess the first question is, why shouldn't employers be able to look at the background and record of the people they want to hire for a job? >> first of all, let's just look at the data, there's been studies now that have shown that there is little or no correlation between someone's ability to do a job and their credit rating. but the principe pal reasons behind it. people ought to be able to get out there and compete for a job based on whether or not they can do the job, not based on whether or not they can pay their bills or whether or not they have had a problem in the past. a divorce a job loss. a death in the family. the kinds of things that cause
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people to have financial problems. compete on the skills for the job, that's all this is about. >> it seems to me this is part of a broader theme in your previous legal scholarship and in your work as a politician which is areas in which it seems the system appears rigged or unfair or finds a way to trap and make life worse for people who given a fair shake could actually do a lot better? >> you put your finger right on it. this is one more way in which the game is rigged. so think about it think way, if you're rich and you get divorced, it's not going to hurt your credit rating, if you're rich and you have a medical problem, it's not going to hurt your credit rating, if you're rich and you end up quitting your job or losing your job, you walk out with a whole lot of savings, you walk out with a nice package, it's not going to hurt your credit rating, but how about family who is work hard every day, who live a lot closer
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to the economic margin. those are the ones who get hit with a problem w a medical problem, with a job loss a and, boy, it's not only the hit, it's the financial fallout from that hit. and here's the deal, it stays on their credit report for seven years. in some cases even longer. so what does that really mean? this is a problem that hits hard working families who are struggling to get back on their feet. it's not one that hits the rich. and i think that's just wrong. i don't think it should happen. >> it seems to me right now there is a convergence of a lot of the issues you have championed both as a scholar and in public life and where the zite geist and the president talking about and where the democratic and liberal base is out there. there's ---elizabeth warren wing of the democratic party. is there an elizabeth warren wing of the democratic party,
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are you its leader? >> this isn't about me, this is about the issues, about what's happening to america's families. america's middle class, america's hard working families have been hammered on for a generation now. and it's not just one problem. it's one after another after another. they have been hit with flat wages or even slightly declining wages and all the core expenses of being middle class, of housing, of health care, of what it costs to keep a child in daycare or send a kid to college, to medical care, all of those costs have shot through the roof. that has put a squeeze on these families. they send as many people as they could into the workforce in two parent families, they sent both mom and dad or both mom into the workforce, but it still wasn't enough. they turned to debt and then they were targeted by a credit industry that figured out you could make huge profits from
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lending to people who were already in a financial squeeze. and so what's happened is america's middle class has just been under this enormous pressure. a and parts of it are beginning to break apart. our once steady, solid, almost dull middle class, that was the idea, we were so sure it would always be there. pieces are starting to break away. >> but senator -- >> families can no longer say to their kids, you're going to do better than i did. and that's what it is we have to attack. >> here's my question, the trends you're talking about and have been tracking and trying to address in legislation like this and other pieces of legislation, you've introduced, these are 34' year trends, we have seen this kind of version of democratic capitalism, and democrats voted for the bankruptcy bill, which you opposed strenuously. i don't know if democrats have done enough to combat this.
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is the democratic party focused enough on this core issue? >> the question is what are we going to do going forward? we have to outline our priorities and we have to be willing to get in there and fight for them. and that's what all of this is about. isles about how we fight for our college kids t kids who are trying to get an education, people who are being crushed by student loan dead. it's about how we fight for seniors to protect social security. and to help people get more money into retirement savings. and in this particular case, with this bill, it's how we fight for people who have been hit by one economic blow or another. and are out there trying to compete in the job market and just want a level playing field. you're right, the pieces come together because a lot is broken and it's going to take a lot of pieces to get it fixed again. >> senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts, great, thanks. >> thank you. coming up, rush limbaugh calls the pope a marxist, the pope comes one the best possible
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not many of you know the boehner billionth day song, this is your birthday song, it doesn't last too long, hey! >> my colleagues, the second verse is exactly like the first verse. >> let's don't sing it. ♪ this is your birthday song ♪ it doesn't last too long ♪ hey happy birthday ralph. >> to mark feel's birthdays.
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the special song went out to the pope. some have been less generous with the pope's birthday song. there's a saying around here, you stand behind what you say. around here you don't make excuses. you make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up, and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it
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birthday with some home lts men arriving with his dog in tow. it's gestures that have turned him into a global icon. but now, news that goes beyond rhetorical flourishes voting to remove cardinal raymond burk's from the bishops. burk is an outspoken cultural warrior who came to the vatican in 2008 after serving as archbish archbishop. his 50 minutes of right wing fame came back in 2004 when he said he would deny communion to catholic politicians like john kerry -- >> a few church leaders say kerry should be denied communion because of views that contradict the church. >> when people are publicly
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sending in other words publicly acting contrary to fundamental teaching of the faith, then i'm required also to take an action with them. >> if cardinal burk is the kind of catholic the american right can really get behind, pope francis is turning out to be the opposite, not surprisingly, becoming a world renowned embodiment of -- pope francis with an increasingly irate audience in conservative media. >> i thought the pope was very much in favor of the european social model which fails it's own people. >> when the pope says it is the obligation of the government to take from the rich and give to the poor because that's the only way to alleviate poverty, he doesn't know what he's talking about. >> he makes me a little concerned on his marxist tendenci tendencies. >> there's no such unfettered
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capitalism that doesn't exist anywhere. >> pope francis responded in a truly amazing way, in a way that, let's face it no midwestern politician could. marketist ideology is wrong but i have met many marxists -- sam cedar hosts the political talk show and podcast majority report and lecturer in law at notre dame law school. i remember the last time that there was a right wing freakout about the pope, which this chapter has been lost to memory, it was in 2003 when pope john paul was doing everything in his power to stop the iraq war, even sending emissaries from the vatican to meet with the saddam spokesperson. and the right lost it. they really lost it at that pope. i haven't seen that since back then. >> no, and we haven't and i think what's happening now is that what we have is sort of a pope who's saying i don't like
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this capitalist system that's going on right now and let's get back to the basic principles of what the catholic church has been all about which is is a preferential option for the poor. the sense in which their -- >> i also think father bill, i think there's a way in which, you know, the full kind of politics of the catholic church, if you can call it that, there is no space in american political life that combines economic ---there's no real political figures that represent that because of the way the two parties have sorted themselves and so one of the things that's fascinating about the church is that the bishops, they always anger the republicans when they talk about things like poverty and health care and the liberals when they talk about abortion and gay rights. here we're seeing a matter of
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emphasis or are we seeing something more than a matter of emphasis with the pope. >> he's still a catholic pope. but we have moved from two consecutive papacies that were focus on consolidation where pope onpaul ii and his successor pope benedict -- drifting too far and too fast away from certain moorings, we had therefore doing quick math here, something like 33 years of consolation which is not unusual in a large institution that has gone through a -- it's time for us to go out to the world, the church's job is to introduce people to christ. and so it's fundamentally by tone, but that tone is rather important because consolation can never be the central business of the church. >> i think the tone a aspect of
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it grace and empathy, you're right, father bill, no church teachings have changed. nothing has changed. but i feel more worldly about the church that was my home during my upbringing. and it really says something, sam about the way you talk about things and the language of cultural war particularly in the way that that kind of polarization works, i want to talk about that right after we take this quick break. new campbell's chunky spicy chicken quesadilla soup. she gives me chunky before every game. i'm very souperstitious. haha, that's a good one! haha! [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. it fills you up right. avo: thesales event "sis back. drive [ male announcer ] campbell's chunky soup. which means it's never been easier to get a new passat, awarded j.d. power's most appealing midsize car, two years in a row. and right now you can drive one home for practically just your signature. get zero due at signing, zero down, zero deposit, and zero first month's
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one getses the impression or it's interpreted this way in the media that he thinks we're
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talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman. but we can never talk enough about that. >> that was cardinal raymond burk, recently not reappointed to an influential council. emphasizing a shift in tone. it's that shift in tone which at first i think there was this question of is this just cosmetic or is there something deeper here and the way the right has responded has led me to believe there's something deeper. >> to a certain extent, there is no catholic voting bloc in this country. >> that's true. >> but i do think to a certain extent that the pope and when you have bishops coming out and attacking john kerry, when you have bishops coming out and attacking nancy pelosi and kathleen sebelius about a --
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moral righteousness that someone like rush limbaugh would assume. and i think it implicates people's decision making and perspective on things even if they're not catholic. the pope, presumably the pope is saying there's some lat opportunity here, there's some change in emphasis that's necessary. what you should be working for first. >> does the burk decision signal something, the first kind of steps towards action aside from a sort of rhetorical shift in tone? >> it was burk and it was regul regally. it's a change in tone, it's a change in the way he wants to do things, but you shouldn't read it in a change in what catholic doctrine is, so on the issue of women, on the issue of lgbt rightless, i was surprised to see the advocates making him their person of the year, and i was like what is is this?
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i think that's a measure of the good will and the tone change. but don't be deceived. he's choosing what he's going to go out for and i think what he's going out for is the poverty and that is the forefront of what will be the hallmark of his papacy. the rest of these things will take time. doctrinal changes come very slowly. i think that's the part that's going to be difficult for everyone. >> do you agree with that father bill? >> more or less. i'm not sure i would say that it's capitalism in particular that he's going after, within a context of a series of statements beginning with john paul ii who certainly was no fan of markism and capitalism. i love it when the church talks about a distortion, such as unfettered capitalism. and people say i can't believe you're attacking me and secondly i never said that. it may be that there's no one out there advocating for unfettered a voe cassey.
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it's a limit that we shouldn't be approaching and it's an emphasis on the pope's love of the poor and the love of the poor is at the heart of the scriptu scriptures. we have looked at glen beck and janet napolitano, i think -- again, on the tonal point, and there's more than tone here, it's the essence that the mission of the church is to go out to the world with good news. conservatives, as you know, i tend to lump myself in that category if i must. the pope just wrote an kperation about joy and it just ruffles feathers. my e-mail exchanges tend to begin with the decline of the west part 117. >> that is a great point because part of what, i think that tonal ship, or you emphasizing economic issues or are you emphasizing social issues. part of it was there's the mart
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of the catholic catechism that's about judgment and sin and grace and redemption and forgiveness and the part that's touched me most is grace redemption and forgiveness and that's what he's been expressing as well. >> i don't think rush limbaugh's problem with that has to do with -- i think it actually has to do with the fact that someone with a huge platform who is perceived as someone who doesn't have skin in the game, he comes from -- there's some type of overarching plot to enhance acorn or whatever. and who is speaking with some authority on this and respected by a large part of the not just the country's population, but the world's population. >> you're suggesting that the pope is some kind of community organizer. >> although has certainly been acting like a community organizer in some way. the pope, the pope has his
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views, but he's earned them. the same can't be said for ms. fonda, mr. clinton, ms. gore, barack obama, elizabeth warren or other high priests priests. thank you all, that is all in for this evening. >> i am so tempted to start talking about jesus christ the original community organizer. >> that's a lot there. >> but that's going to make for a very long night. >> we should have that conversation sometime. anyway, thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. once upon a time, a member of congress shocks a watermelon. he shot a poor defenseless watermelon with a pistol. he thought that shooting a watermelon in his backyard might help him prove his theory that president bill clinton was secretly a murder. >> we at my house with a